Tripod, the only way to find out if you have a nutrient deficiency is to have a soil test done. Even soil that looks good and has plenty of amendments in it can be lacking in some of the basic necessities. Your local cooperative extension office or a GOOD full service garden center should be able to tell you where you can get the test done. The test kits you can buy for home use are pretty useless. Send it to a good lab. It will cost very little in comparison to the pleasure of a good melon! Other causes can be cloudy weather (or shady location) without sufficient sunshine, diseases that keep leaves from providing the sugars and other nutrients for the fruit, and as you already know, over watering during the last 3 weeks or so of ripening time. Also, picking a bit too early produces typical store-bought taste. Are these varieties that you've successfully grown before? If so, check out the possibility of lack of sun and get the soil test results. These two things should go a long way to helping with the diagnosis. Good luck. There's nothing much better than a good melon fresh from the garden. Sandy

I called a tree trimmer/cert arborist today. Murray's tree service-- in case any of you have used prior. He's supposed to come out on Thurs. to take a look and give me an estimate on trimming the oak. He said that it does indeed sound like the fungal problem that is going around Pinellas and Hillsborough currently. He said that professional growers have lost a lot of trees to it this year. It is an airborne fungus and highly contagious and will kill your tree and also spread to others. Definitely not good news. Today, I noticed my orange tree now has the same symptoms. He also recommended the copper fungicide as well, which I will definitely try (have not found any YET...at least at Lowes). But he said that it has not provided much to prevent the ultimate decline of the tree. I'm going to wait to see what he says further once he gets here on Thursday and will try the copper stuff. I'm not one to cut down a tree unless it is actually dead or close to it. While it is still bearing fruit and has leaves, it can stay in my yard. I am hoping for a miracle.... :(

Uneven ripening has several possible causes but weather factors is probably the most common. Excessive heat or unusual cool night temps, excess or inconsistent soil moisture, compacted soil, root stunting, low soil potassium, etc. Basically anything that interferes with normal distribution of nutrients throughout the fruit as it is developing. Dave PS: In the previous discussions here about this question many of us suggest you try picking the tomatoes after they reach breaker stage and allowing them to ripen indoors out of the sun and heat.

Imelda, commercial orchardists in Florida (and in all citrus producing states), don't just rely on Imidacloprid. They use a series of various foliar and systemic insecticides to try to manage their orchards. The goal for commercial growers in Florida is to try to keep the trees alive a year or two longer than the average 5 year death rate. Right now, they are rotationally re-planting their orchards, and relying on several pesticides, as well as other measures (such as the one John mentioned - planting less desirable trees around the perimeter of their orchards) to try to stretch out their replacement rates due to death from HLB. The goal for our commercial growers here in California is to kill the psyllid prior to being able to feed on the tree, or incapacitate the psyllid to such a degree, that even if it does begin to feed, there isn't enough time for a potentially infected psyllid (I use the adverb, "potentially" to indicate that we do not have any infected psyllids discovered, yet in California) to inject their infected saliva back into the tree, and thus infect the tree.And, as Steve has pointed out, most certainly would not make it to tree #2, to spread the disease. Also, imidacloprid is a neonicotinoid, and one of the useful features of neonicotinoids is that they are anti-feedants, so psyllids don’t want to feed on trees treated with them. It causes the tree to naturally repel psyllids. Commercial growers have been recommended to apply imidacloprid systemically every 6 weeks, and then use various foliar pesticide applications in between that use different modes of action. Suzi, that is the philosophy behind integrated pest management - use the least harmful management option, first. Only resorting to more intense or toxic management options if the less harmful options are insufficient. You're doing the responsible thing. I was using Spinosad only to treat CLM, but now, I am compelled to also use Imidacloprid as well, since I have over 100 citrus trees on my property, and am adjacent to 157 acres of completely un-managed and abandoned citrus trees that are a giant magnet for all manner of pests. I don't want to use systemic pesticides, as I don't relish eating fruit with pesticide residuals, which is why I grow my own fruit. But, we are in extreme times, and as they say, "extreme times require extreme measures". I am very careful to apply only the recommended amounts and frequencies. I spray my Spinosad in the evening, after the bees have gone back to the hives, and try to spray only after blossom time is over (not always possible with my lemons, as they bloom multiple times). Patty S.